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Medal, meddle, metal, mettle
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Medal, meddle, metal, mettle
Medal has one narrow definition. It refers to a flat piece of metal stamped with an inscription and given (1) as an award for placing high in a competition or (2) to commemorate brave performance in war.Get more news about Metal Medal,you can vist our website!
Metal refers to any of a category of elements that usually have shiny surfaces, conduct heat and electricity, and can be melted. Metal is also a genre of music (short for heavy metal).
Mettle refers to (1) courage and fortitude, and (2) inherent quality of character and temperament.
A fourth word in this group of homophones is meddle, a verb meaning to intrude on another’s affairs or to tamper. It does not function as a noun, so it is easy to keep separate from the others.
Metal and mettle are closely related, with shared roots in the Latin metallum. In fact, they were variants of each other in their main senses until around the 17th century, when they began to differentiate. Medal, meanwhile, has a separate source—the French médaille, which in turn has roots in Italian and ultimately the Latin medallia. Since its use in Vulgar Latin, it has always related to coins. Meddle has a long history in English, but it derives ultimately from Latin words having to do with mixing.